Big Bang Theory - The Knight Industries Extrapolation
by Thor2000
Summary: Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj get to test a new intense "battle world" simulation full of games and physical exercises, but it actually turns into a free-for-all with each of them trying to out-do the other for points, glory and ego.
1. Chapter 1

Traffic moved steadily and eloquently up and down North Los Robles in Pasadena. Cars, trucks, cycles and several varied conveyances moved in almost perfect synchronized symphony as lights changed and stopped whole lanes of vehicles from moving to let others pass for a few minutes then letting it move again. Intermixed in this vast modern real world tableau, local pedestrians and visiting travelers existed in this mélange of civilization. Two friends stopped and hesitated out of the coffee shop, one of them taking another sip of his fresh brewed morning coffee before departing. A female bike messenger stopped to catch a drink from her thermos, then looked up to the bookstore up on the curb and noticed a book by authoress Elizabeth Vannacutt she was interested in reading. Departing out the back of her apartment building, Penny Parker was also tipping back her morning coffee in her orange and white waitress uniform and hurrying out to her little car and hoping she could get all the way to work before her engine light came on in her car. This morning was almost like just every other morning except with little variances, and Leonard was starting to realize it. Waking up, going to work at the university, dealing with Sheldon and then going to bed just to do it again the next day was starting to become a routine he felt trapped in. Rajesh was feeling it too and to a lesser extent even Howard. Recently married to a cute and adorable blonde biochemist named Bernadette with a childlike voice and cartoon giggle, he too was starting to feel he needed something new and exciting to break up the monotony. While they all enjoyed going to Stuart's Comics over on Ellsworth Avenue, it just seemed as if this week was no different than the week before. However, there was one member of their retinue that didn't feel their same sentiment.

"Burned out? Hell, no…" Sheldon Cooper sounded chipper and looked at their surly faces with a sparkle in his gleaming eyes. "But I understand your predicament, and I disagree. What you guys are confusing as routine is actually perfect order and conformity. Every morning I wake up, I realize that I'm living through another cycle of a flawlessly balanced system that I perfected with absolutely no surprises, hindrances or variations."

"Yes, Sheldon…" Leonard sighed tiredly. "But we're not androids. We're normal."

Sheldon looked at them as if he was peeved by their snide comment.

"We're tired, Sheldon…" Leonard continued. "Nothing exciting or new has happened in a while." They walked up the sidewalk from where they had parked toward Stuart's Shop.

"Nothing exciting?" Sheldon scoffed again. "Why do you think I am constantly bringing up new and interesting new pieces of info to share with you guys? Why do you think I'm constantly trying to enliven your lives with bright new discussions and speculative debates?"

"Because you're an egomaniac and like being the center of attention." Raj answered as they passed Mocha Jojo's Coffee Shop.

"I've been so down I actually promised Bernadette I'd take her to visit her grandparents in Nevada." Howard sighed. "They actually collect and paint rocks to sell to tourists, and, God help me, that sounded exciting!"

"Maybe Stuart's got something going on…" Leonard held the door open to the guys to go in ahead of him. Ahead of them, the place was filled with the posters and memorabilia of both the comic book, science fiction and fantasy genres. Howard called it "nerd nirvana," a haven for guys like trying to hold on to the only happy memories of their otherwise distraught childhoods. Tables were full of boxes of old and new comic books, the corners reserved for books and VHS and DVD collections and the ceiling strung up with model space-ships, crime-fighting vehicles and even the occasional inflatable action figure. The walls were covered in posters of superhero artwork, shelves of toys and reproductions of movie weapons and autographed photos of famous science fiction and fantasy actors. Some of them were gifts to Stuart from actor Wil Wheaton, a well-known actor from an acclaimed science fiction series from the Nineties. Upon entering, Sheldon's blank expression took on a likeness of happy familiarity dosed with a token of idol worship.

"Well, if it isn't Wil Wheaton, my new best friend…" He saw Wil as a colleague and comrade, a drastic change from his previous enmity with the actor over an unhappy absence at an autograph session years before. Will looked up with an amused look tinged with uncomfortable overtones, glanced to Stuart and back again. He had other people in his life he was much more friendly with, but he wasn't about to upset Sheldon by dosing his joy with reality.

"Hello, Sheldon…" Wil beamed jovially as he looked up then restrained his demeanor with curiosity. "Hey, what ever happened with that going into space thing?"

"No comment…" Sheldon reacted with buried embarrassment.

"He failed the personality screening…" Howard revealed. "But I may get to go…" The guys were always willing to reveal more of the Sheldon they knew to Wil. By now, they had got to know enough of him to accept him as a friend than as another science fiction icon. Raj stood by with a light sigh to meet Will again, but Leonard pretended to be distracted by a large Hulk figurine Stuart had his counter. Eyeing the seventy-five dollar price with the fifteen percent off sticker, he placed it aside and started thumbing through the collector cards near the cash register.

"That sounds exciting…" Stuart responded and bobbed his head as the fact entered his brain. "You guys must be excited for Howard…"

"Not really…" Sheldon confessed.

"Yeah, we're all really happy for him… Hey, Stuart…" Leonard turned to him eager to change the subject. "What do you do when you start getting depressed?"

"I'll let you know when I figure it out…" Stuart responded as he lightly bobbed his head once again. "But, hey… Wil, what was that thing you were telling me about?"

"You mean the fantasy fun place?" Wil responded looking up from the counter. "You guys are going to love this. This entrepreneur guy has got a live-action and mental skill game built out of the remains of an old underground military installation out near Hitchcock, California." Wil told the guys. "It's opening in two years, but he's looking for serious gamers to go through the system and give their opinions of it. Now, he heard I was a big gamer, and invited me to go through it and check it out, but I'm flying to Romania to start shooting a movie and I can't use the invitation he sent me. Would you guys be interested to use it?"

"Interested?" Raj chuckled excitedly trying to hold back his excitement. "Of course, we're interested! I'd give my left nut to Shiva for some excitement…"

Wil scowled a bit. Just when he thought he got Raj, he said something weird like that.

"That must be a Hindu thing…" He replied.

"Mental and live-action?" Sheldon scowled and twitched at the prospect.

"Yes, Sheldon…" Wil realized he had to explain. "That means running, climbing and shooting…"

"I don't know…"

"What do you mean you don't know?" Leonard suddenly had a reason to live. "It sounds awesome!" He looked to Howard and Raj grinning like big kids again. "Can you make all the arrangements?"

"It's just a phone call away." Wil lifted his cell phone to pull up his e-mail and get the phone number he needed to adjust the invite for the guys. He just pulled up his phone account and hit redial on the right message as the guys talked over his hushed conversation.

"Guys, imagine…" Leonard was finally grinning. "We get to check out an entirely new game before it even opens."

"The poor fools…" Sheldon looked up with his ego up to full pressure. "By time I'm through with it, there will be nothing else…"

"Yes, four guys…" Wil already had the guy on his phone. He looked up to Sheldon and did a double take. "Technically, three and a half…."

Sheldon looked up annoyed then dismissed on it.

"Oh… because Howard's so short…."


	2. Chapter 2

2

Built by a motion picture entrepreneur and former actor named Nicholas Knight, the Desert Oasis Hotel and Spa was located at the spot on Old Highway 10 near Hitchcock, California where the old Fowler Hotel once sat before the tragic shootout between the police and Sidney Krueger, a German crime boss from Texas in 1943. Seventeen people were lost in the shoot-out, four of them were civilians, but after the FBI shut the place down, the hotel was seized by Federal agents to investigate hotel owner Clayton Fowler of suspected mob ties. They never found anything, but the once prospering town never survived. Since then, it had become a vague UFO mecca for paranormal researchers that came looking for lights in the sky since Clayton's daughter, Nancy Archer reportedly saw a UFO in 1957. Knight acquired the derelict hotel when he purchased the decommissioned missile base up in the hills to create his landmark attraction, but he actually had it demolished and rebuilt further up in the hills atop the old military installation. As his new grand resort was taking shape, he sent a shuttle bus to pick up Leonard, Raj, Howard and Sheldon in Pasadena and drove them the three hours out of town to be his guests at the location preparing to open.

As they arrived, the guys looked out and saw a hotel that looked like the giant lodge from "The Shining." Four stories tall with the main entrance under a tower that included an observation deck, it looked at if it had over 500 rooms, each with a small balcony overlooking the property. Built of shimmering blocks of limestone from the pits cut out of nearby San Cristobel, it had a circular driveway with a fountain and Mexican gardeners planting bushes and gardens and cleaning a decorative frieze over the entry way of the hotel atop an elevation over twelve stairs. From a distance, it had looked like a huge white ocean liner with a single smokestack perched up top on an ocean of desert, but up close, it looked like a giant institute of learning. There was still scaffolding as men filled in patching in the masonry, and workmen were running lines and positioning both internet leads and security cameras. Howard's eyes glinted with excitement at the sight of this place, and Leonard grinned like a giant kid.

"My parent's house in India is bigger than this place." Raj commented. Sheldon looked at him.

"Could you imagine what I could do with the money made to build this place funneled into my research?" Sheldon perched his head left and right taking it all in. "I could not only re-write the rules on physics but create the world's first time machine!"

"Sheldon…" Howard spoke. "I would pay you $100 just to not say a word for an entire month!" The shuttle bus had stopped and the driver slipped out to pull their baggage down off the roof of the vehicle. Pouring from their ride slowly and uncertain of their surroundings, the four prodigies strided forward unsure what they were about to find. They were in a resort in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by palm trees, gardens, a swimming pool and golf course, and yet, all they could think about was the games they would be playing. What kind of games would they be playing? Would they be live action or simulated? Would they be role-playing games or computer-generated? All they did find were workmen on scaffolding perfecting every last detail of this place. With their driver pulling in their luggage on a cart, Howard looked up to the painting, mopping, renovating, decorating and all the other work still going on around him and the guys. Raj stood wide-eyed under the high-domed ceiling of the entry hall, and Leonard slightly scowled a bit confused to where the games were. Responding in short quirky bird-like motions, Sheldon looked bored and distracted. Another guest ahead of them was being taken to the elevators from the admissions desk.

"Welcome to Game-World!" Nicholas Knight came to meet them. Six foot two with large shoulders, an uneven beard and a thinning hairline that ended at a brunette ponytail behind his head, he wore a black long-sleeved form-fitting shirt with blue jeans and carried a computer clipboard, a screen which he tapped and used his finger to type out messages and notes and moved around programs. Turning off his ear bud of employees sending him messages across the hotel, he came to meet the guys after gesturing to one of his clerks to take their baggage. "You must be Howard, Raj, Leonard and Kelton…"

The guys chuckled with a low throaty chortle.

"Sheldon…" Sheldon corrected him. "Doctor Sheldon Cooper…"

"My mistake…" Nick spoke like a former football player and gestured to two of his guys to take the guys overnight bags. "You guys are going to love this place. It's over a square mile of a former underground military silo from the Forties that was closed down in 1983. I bought it in 2005, and I've been installing game-filled theme rooms underground connected in between by mazes and elevators. Deciding on how you navigate the maze and play the games decides how far you get, how many points you receive and where you go. I've got almost fifty game rooms for you guys to visit under our feet and miles of tunnels, hallways, corridors, stairs and elevators to navigate, but don't get scared, it's all monitored by computer so no one gets lost or injured."

"So, how do we play?" Leonard looked around as Nick took them to the admission desk. "Together…" He looked to the guys. "Or alone?"

"Either way if you like…" Nick gave them forms to fill out and wavers to sign. The desk clerk also scanned their thumbprints into the hotel files. "But I think you'll have a lot more fun if you split up. There are so many games I think you'll have more fun by splitting up. Some parts of the maze have doors that close and rooms that change so it would be kind of hard for a group of guys to keep up with each other."

"So let me get this straight…" Raj was intrigued. "It's a maze of game rooms…"

"Yes."

"Controlled by computer…"

"Yes."

"Each room has a different game in it…"

"Yes."

"Earning points along the way?"

"Yes…"

"Intriguing!" Sheldon spoke up, looked around and noticed the guys were being led toward an elevator. "Finally, a challenge for my intuitive, cognitive and intellectual processing faculties." He had developed a cocky little grin. Leonard looked at him reticent and sighed tiredly.

"I can't wait to start…" Sheldon was being led with the guys. "Where do we go?"

"Tomorrow morning…" Nick told them. "There's a few last minute simulations we're testing but I've got all of you set of with private rooms for the night because tomorrow morning, the action starts."

"And that's when I put these guys in their place with my superior mind." Sheldon and the guys heading toward the stairs, but then realized the place had an elevator. Shades of their building back home, they realized how conditioned they had become and joined Nick and the attendant with their luggage in the large elevator.

"Sheldon, you get winded going up and down the stairs." Leonard pointed out his physical limitations.

"Wait a minute, if we're really doing this separately than together, who's to say I won't win more points than the rest of you?" Raj responded as the elevator closed on them.

"Your Far Eastern stamina against the superior cognitive power of my brain? Don't be ridiculous."

"Are you suggesting an actual competition of our selective abilities and game-playing skills?" Howard got into their debate.

"Wait, guys, I think…" Nick started speaking.

"Now, wait a second…" Leonard interrupted him. "I believe there's one gamer among us more than capable than coming out ahead of the rest."

"Thanks for the vote, Leonard." Sheldon simpered a small grin.

"I was talking about myself."

Nick and his employee shared furtive confused glances as they reached the second floor.

"Are we really going for a free for all against each other?" Howard stepped first from the elevator.

"Why not?" Leonard palmed his hotel room card and followed his luggage on the cart. "Maybe we finally find out who's the best gamer?"

"Which would be me." Sheldon spoke up out loud. Nick had opened Howard's room across the hall from Leonard. He then covertly turned to Mike, his room attendant as the guys continued arguing and debating.

"Going to be an interesting weekend…"


	3. Chapter 3

3

Back from a silent breakfast with the guys, Leonard found his invitation to the games on the floor where it had been slid under the door. Ripping it open, he sat down on the bed.

"Greetings, honored guest," It read. "This invitation is to let you know you have been accepted into Game-World, possibly one of the largest in-door gaming systems available. Here you not only play the game, you are part of the game, and how you play and where you go controls just how far you get as well as how much you can get, but be careful, this is no ordinary maze as walls change, doors come and go and floors can give in to hidden passage ways. When you are ready to enter, use your thumbprint to activate the portal inside your closet to start. You do not know what thrills and surprises are ahead of you!"

Narrowing his eyes curiously, Leonard tossed the invitation on to his bed and looked to his closet. It looked normal, but now he saw a small light off to the side he had not noticed when he hung up his jacket. Pressing his thumb into it, he heard a low humming noise of a magnetically operated lift, and the back wall slid open to reveal a secret lift. It was round in size with crescent shaped handrails, a dark blue-carpeted floor and stainless steel sides with a paneled ceiling. Stepping inside under his closet rod activated a motion detector and Leonard heard the door sliding shut and taking him right from his room. There were no buttons inside, just a mechanical lock for the hotel staff to access specific levels, but Leonard felt he was going very low underground. From his second floor room, he felt himself dropping five stories, maybe ten stories underground, before the door opened for him. It opened into a small foyer scene like that seen in a large mansion with a dining room to one scene, a living room to the other and an upstairs. Strolling curiously into the dining room, he saw a nice Fifties scene. Two little kids sitting at a table with a father smoking a pipe and a mother washing dishes at a sink. The mother wore a red sweater with a pink poodle skirt, the dad had a suit and the two boys were dressed in Late Fifties fashion, striped shirts and blue jeans with high-top sneakers. To the left outside the back screen door was a psycho hockey mask killer waiting to get in. Surprised by that figure, Leonard took a right down the hall to some stairs overlooked by a camera. The setting changed to an empty submarine gangplank with claxon lights flashing and sounds of water passing overhead. This maze was quite elaborate. It didn't just lead him into multiple directions, it offered him one tableau after another, each one against the next, making it hard to tell where one ended and the other began. It was almost like moving through someone's dreams, and while he never saw the Navy tableau, he did cross over into a wood fort where Captain Custer and five Union Soldiers were outside a window firing at Indians in a historically inaccurate mock-up. Wandering around left and right wondering where he was, Leonard tripped one wall that closed behind him, and then noticed a new door open up near him. Eager to have fun, he hastened his step and slipped through into another tableau.

Before him were the figures of eight wax figures of seated people holding hands around a table having a séance under dingy, dusty and cobwebbed surroundings. They all looked pale, clad in old period clothes with incredible detail to faces and expressions. Their glass eyes had expressions of shock surprise and awe. The room itself looked old and deserted, lit by light filaments in the form of fake candles and light fixtures. The curtains were ragged and torn, the wallpaper thin and peeling and the portraits were all haunted with creepy eyes staring back. Leonard was impressed by the scene and the figures, but where were the games? Off the scene was a large dingy foyer with stairways ascending to a darkened balcony. Sounds of a storm played through hidden speakers as an animated storm played in the window. On the floor, a deserted proton gun connected to the wall by a long tether rested at the bottom of the stairs. The ceiling was a huge computer screen, and down on the wall, a false portrait crackled to life.

"Greetings, welcome to my house," Author Stephen King narrated the video intro to the game. "As you can see, it is very haunted, but before you can leave, you need to get as many of the ghosts before they can get you. Twenty-five points for each ghost, fifty for each specter and one hundred for every other malicious spirit, and each of the three levels gets harder. Happy nightmares!" His screen turned into a grinning skeleton in a chair. Leonard heard a hollow laughter ring out as a shape passed overhead on the ceiling, a huge video screen filled with animated ghosts. Unprepared, he grabbed his fake gun and got ready to play.

"Lock and load…" He heard another shrill scream and fired. The gun made loud noises, and the animated spirit exploded and revealed 100 points. More animated ghosts started appearing, one at a time and in groups. Firing at everything, Leonard realized he was in a life-size computer game. He wondered what he had missed getting here and continued blasting. The screams and hollow laughter was loud as if it was the real thing, but he was raking up numbers. 230 points, 380 points, 420 points… The angry scowling skeleton shook his angry fist at him as Level One ended. More were coming faster and in larger numbers.

From his room, Sheldon turned up in a military hallway hearing gunfire then found himself in a swiveling tunnel that forced him to change his direction. He ended up in a fake store stockroom with a maze constructed of boxes, crates and stacks of industrial cans. Dashing through as fast as he could, he took a left into a hall and traveled over a wood bridge over fake river gorge into another hall that closed shut on him, a doorway opened to a secret stairway. Grinning assuredly, he entered up into a room with a hall. Offered to go left and right, he took right and entered into a comic book tableau with full-size wax figures around a large round dark blue table of specific iconic superheroes posed in deep discussion. Christopher Reeve as Superman, Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman and Michael Keaton as Batman with John Wesley Shipp as the television Flash and Kiefer Sutherland as the bare-chested Nineties Aqua-Man with long hair. A young David Faustino played Robin and Sara Michelle Gellar as Supergirl rounded out their milieu. A bare-chested Keanu Reeves clad only in a dark green set of form-fitting trunks played Namor the Submariner. However, possibly because of the date this room was conceived, the Avengers, however, did not even have the luxury of being portrayed by their big budget movie actor counterparts, and were instead filled out by someone's efforts to connect celebrity faces to the iconic figures. Eric-Allan Kramer once again played Thor since the Hulk TV-Movie, and Eighties action star Marc Singer played Captain America and a young Nineties Tom Selleck was Iron Man in the red and silver battle suit. Brendan Fraser and Alyssa Milano played Ant Man and the Wasp. Ben Affleck in the Daredevil costume leaned out of the way with his mask pulled down around his neck. Sheldon wasn't sure if he cared for the setting, but the artwork and mastery of the sculptures was impressive. He eventually tripped a motion sensor to the view screen.

"Welcome new hero to the Avengers Mansion where the Justice League of America are our guests," Lou Ferrigno, Television's former Hulk greeted Sheldon on the view screen. "In the hallway, you will find thirty images of our greatest heroes fighting alongside each other to stop a Martian invasion from taking over the Earth. Click on the lights for each image that shows a mistake; find all the mistakes and you will pass on to the next level."

"Oh, you're just giving it way at this point, Mr. Lou Ferrigno." Sheldon mugged very cockily.

"By the way," Ferrigno added. "The Marvel and DC Characters in the same image is not considered a mistake here."

Sheldon looked back at him and ignored the potential to appreciate the figures in order to hurriedly finish the game. Passing through the arch, he entered a room with Tobey McGuire's Spiderman sticking to the ceiling and watching the other figures. There was another metal door blocking his way, and on the wall to the left were thirty pieces of artwork showing the Marvel and DC heroes fighting green creatures with huge brains wielding lasers and exotic weapons. Sheldon scanned over them once and began clicking switches.

"Spiderman with webs out fingers, wrong, Silver Age Batman with Golden Age Robin, wrong, Hulk with striped pants, wrong, Aqua-Man with red hair, wrong…" He paused. "Oh, good, heavens, they all have something wrong in them!" He went through clicking on all the lights. "And might I add it should be the Christian Bale Batman in your little tableau, not the Michael Keaton!" He called out in case Nick was listening then turned and waited for the door to open. It wasn't opening.

"They're all wrong! Open the door!" He paused and waited again.

"Did I miss a picture?"

Three game rooms away and one floor below, Howard's lift opened on what appeared to be a large landing bay, but he looked again and recognized a huge life-size replica of the Millennium Falcon from "Star Wars" before him. Wax-recreations of Harrison Ford as Han Solo with Chewbacca and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia at it's boarding ramp frozen in mid-firefight with Imperial storm troopers. The whole complex was one huge gamer's paradise and wax museum! Off to the side were C-3P0 and R2-D2 rushing to safety with Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi blocking a doorway with a light saber duel. Mostly metallic with a ceiling of girders and support beams, the whole far wall beyond the fastest hunk of junk in the universe was painted to look like empty space. Stunned back into his childhood, Howard strolled forward in deep awe; it was one of his biggest dreams come true. It was just like getting into the movie. Pausing to look at Leia's chest and cleavage with a smirk, he noticed the hallway off to the side beyond the droids seemed out of place. Just planning to peek in, he glanced in and noticed the gangplank to actually slip into and sit inside an actual X-Wing Fighter.

"This makes up for being Jewish and not getting to celebrate Christmas!" He called out and raced eagerly to sit in the fighter and pretend to be a Rebel pilot, but the moment his posterior hugged the seat, he must have tripped a motion sensor because the glass canopy closed up around him and the sky of stars around and over him turned into a TV screen.

"It's up to you to save the universe…" Mark Hamill appeared on screen as an older and more mature Luke Skywalker. "Take the X-Wing and try to get as many TIE-Fighters as you can. Fifty Points for every fighter you get, but you will lose Twenty Points for every X-Wing you accidentally destroy. May the Force be with you..." Hamill blinked off as the huge fighter lifted and jostled on a system of pistons and hydraulic jacks in the simulated mock battle. The fighter throttle between his legs turned into a joystick for this specialized full-size video game.

"I wish I could fly this thing out of here!" Howard was now blasting and firing at three-dimensional rendered animated TIE-Fighters. "I'd get even with everyone who ever called me a geek in high school!"

A floor under him and a few bunkers away, Raj had departed the lift from his room, and found himself in an underground airplane hangar set up as a suburban street. An asphalt street stretched the length of the chamber before him, and clean-cut clapboard houses and fake trees obscured the walls from letting him realize it was all fake. The walkways were lined with streetlights, mailboxes replete with a mailman frozen in time and even fake rain gutters linked to the facilities storm drains. The yards were trimmed fiberglass properties with fake tableaus of kids on bicycles, a couple walking hand in hand on the sidewalk and even a male wax figure mowing his yard. It was as if a great force had lifted this neighborhood from Earth and cast it underground. The ceiling far above provided lights from more than a dozen movie spotlights, and Raj wandered a few feet from the lone brick house on this vast set. Through the window of this fake house, he saw a girl doing her homework at the dining room table. The entire setting had a very Norman Rockwell meets "The Twilight Zone" mood. All he could hear was the sound of fake birds being piped in, the hum of the large industrial lights and then the sudden loud cheering of another player.

From the white clapboard house with the wax figures of kids in the yard, two twin boys from Boston charged forward. They had won the right to test the games here through an on-line contest.

"That was so cool, dude!" Zack Martin congratulated his brother. "Maybe you're not quite as big a geek as I thought."

"Thanks a lot…." Cody rolled his eyes after fighting animatronic zombies then looked at the blue Dutch Colonial façade across the street. "Let's check out what's in there!" They raced across the road and entered the maze again. That was when Raj noticed the porch light on their house had gone off. At the same time, another house's light was going on. That must have been the indicator showing what games were active or unavailable. Eyeing the house closest to him with the bay windows and fake rose bushes, Raj pushed forward. Entering the house as fast as he could, the front foyer lead straight into a jungle setting behind the house, and Raj found himself going from American suburbia to South American jungle. Behind him, a proximity sensor closed the room up to him and something else. A weird chirping of strange creatures chirped through the room, and Raj tried turning back, following the wall into what looked like a deserted bunker. It looked ruined, deserted and abandoned. The walls were adorned in stained posters and artwork promoting a fictional locale known as Jurassic Park.

"Hello fellow castaway…" A gray-haired Jeff Goldblum appeared in a screen left running in the structure. "How fast can you run? You've got sixty seconds to make the guard post and use the rifle up there to pick off raptors trying to reach you. Fifty points for every raptor you kill, Seventy-five for every T-Rex… however, if you don't make the guard post and it closes before you make it, its game over and you're out. Man, I'd hate to be you…"

"What am I supposed to be running from?" Raj saw the timer start then heard hydraulics lifting something huge, heavy and covered in scales. It looked like the exact same full-size scale model T-Rex used to make the movie being used to motivate him. It lifted up and opened his mouth to emanate one loud reverberating roar through the complex and focus its eyes right on him. Raj's eyes widened in shock upon this huge beast barreling down on him. Deep down, he knew it was all fake, a huge animatronic dinosaur on steel treads pulled by chains under the floor, but he saw the animatronic guard gesturing to him and slowing sliding backward into a closing metal hatch. A path of lights leading the way for him to reach the game console two-hundred and fifty feet away, a claxon blaring as a warning that it would be closing, Raj raced for the opening as fake tails and heads poked up in the surrounding rubber shrubbery looking for him in the huge soundstage, and he slipped through the door just before it slammed shut to the fake predators. A fake rifle attached to the wall was his weapon as computer generated dinosaurs popped up on video for him to shoot.

"I was wrong…" He told himself as he hit two then three. "It is just like being in the movie!" He grinned, took the fake rifle and started blasting the fake computer-animated killers.

"There is no way I'm losing to Sheldon in this!" He pictured Sheldon's face on every raptor he shot.


End file.
